Gold sellers in help chat channel

Stratics Veteran

This is the very first message the new players receive in the game on Europa:

Paging or ignoring doesn't work since when someone pages about this, this spammer immediately creates another trial account and continues from where he left off. If the Wayback Wednesday event wasn't in TC1, I'm sure we would see these on Grakulen's screen too since the help channel is the default channel for the new players. I've sent a pm two months ago to the developers, suggested to block some specific words and any clever combinations of those words from the character names and chat channels. Unfortunately, I haven't received any response but maybe they thought that wouldn't stop it and maybe they are not sure what to do about it either. So is there anybody in the community who knows a good solution to this, perhaps implemented on another game?

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

They do it in Wow too I am not sure how they can stop them without putting a end to trial accounts. And I am not sure if it is the web trials they are grabbing. A few months back a few players were asking in chat if anyone had code sheets from past expantion. They were bugging for all they can get their hands on.

Stratics Veteran

I can't imagine this is something easy to tackle. I'm sure these places are well prepared to be shut down and have backup plans. Diablo III hasn't even been out a week and they already have gold farmers spamming the general chat channel.

I can't imagine this is something easy to tackle. I'm sure these places are well prepared to be shut down and have backup plans. Diablo III hasn't even been out a week and they already have gold farmers spamming the general chat channel.

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In a day or two, Diablo III Auction House will be opened up for real-world money, and players will be able to buy/sell gold and items/resources without having to go through any third parties or do anything shady/risky. As you level up, you can sell your previous gear for actual money, transferred to your paypal account.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

Yup, Dofus has the option to sell in game gold through a game market for ogrines... tokens you can use to pay for gametime. So effectively you can sell and buy gold legally just using that market. All without having to deal with shady websites.

Stratics VeteranAlumniStratics Legend

Instead of doing nothing about gold farmers and spamming in general chat there is a much easier way to please the players. Of course this could help benefit UO and maybe a pay raise for staff and employees that run UO. Since EA has seen what they can make with DD ( Digital Distrubution) why not make your own cash shop with items as these sellers and sites that do sale. Control the market and the current players could buy staright from EA which adds more revenue for themselves. This issue isn't UO alone since its rampant in Warhammer also but may as well capitalize on a product you already own.

Best

Zos!

Ok the above may not be the crowd pleaser of the ones who control the markets and sites but in the end the "PIXELS" are owned by EA and they can do whatever they want but may as well get the money that may help UO if the community would buy from EA only.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

Instead of doing nothing about gold farmers and spamming in general chat there is a much easier way to please the players. Of course this could help benefit UO and maybe a pay raise for staff and employees that run UO. Since EA has seen what they can make with DD ( Digital Distrubution) why not make your own cash shop with items as these sellers and sites that do sale. Control the market and the current players could buy staright from EA which adds more revenue for themselves. This issue isn't UO alone since its rampant in Warhammer also but may as well capitalize on a product you already own.

Best

Zos!

Ok the above may not be the crowd pleaser of the ones who control the markets and sites but in the end the "PIXELS" are owned by EA and they can do whatever they want but may as well get the money that may help UO if the community would buy from EA only.

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Well you can do this yet buying items from origin store...

I think it is time to overthink the whole situation and build an in-game shop which can be used by Origin (dont need to log on the Origin Store on the Web to be able to buy that forged metal of artifacts - just buy it in game and pay with your monthly subscription bill) and can be used by players as an auction house - you dont need a vendor, you pay your fees at the auction house, or if you got a vendor it will be linked to the auction house and you pay your fees there...

I for my part would have no problem at all stoping the whole vendor system anyway...just open an auction house were everyone could sell and buy any stuff - pay with gold OR pay with $$$ - yes and be able to sell your GP for $$$ - you will see the GP prices drop emediatly and it will stop the 3rd parties busness fast - on the other hand, alot of people would be pissed...but thats life...if you got millions of gold worth 80 Cent / Million that will be worth maybe 20 Cents / Million in a few days (and this will happen) also your rares and stuff you bought a few weeks before will drop in "value" fast - not an easy task to please all

Stratics Veteran

The day they open an auction house is the day I quit. The same thing would happen as happens in WOW, you don't need to leave the auction house, just buy cheap and re-post straight back onto the house at a higher amount. All without having to move out of the building. Any 'bargains' disappear quicker than you can poke a stick at em. The buyers have toons that just sit and scan the auction houses, it is all they do, WOW auction houses are just huge farms. The 'free' market as you put it goes entirely to the rich and to those who want to totally control the market for all the useful or high end items.

At least with the vendor system, to 'corner' the market completely a character would have to run all over the facets and all over the land masses buying up x from vendor A in Malas and y from vendor B in the wilds near Trinsic etc etc. Not an easy proposition given the fluidity of the placement of vendors on any shard at any given time. Sure some do it now but it is no way near as easy as just sitting in one place and doing it for no effort and they certainly don't get to control it all. Bargains can still be had in UO. Even in Luna you can generally find stuff half the price from one vendor to another.

As for the gold sellers/spammers, the ONLY reason they do it is that there is a market created by the players that makes it worth their while. So for all those saying they hate it , unfortunately there are an equal amount or more who quietly go about utilizing the service. If players DIDN'T buy from them they wouldn't be here. Sad but True.

STOP BUYING FROM THEM , PROBLEM SOLVED.

If EA was to 'sell' gold to make the $$ themselves then whatever EA sold a " million " for would be instantly undercut by the sellers so that is NOT a realistic option either. Unless you want to see a million gold selling for 5 cents usd, in which case they may as well just give all our bank accounts unlimited gold, but, then they may as well just close the game down, as there would be zero point in playing it.

Similar if they go down the road of 'buy the item here for $xxx dollars' off the EA shop instead of fighting the boss mob for it , or taking your chance with the RNG in game, why again bother to play the game? It would totally wreck any form of challenge and imo those who don't want to 'pay' for items are just as likely to quit because the easy 'buy out' devalues the game play for ALL. Want something? Heck don't 'work' for it just go 'buy' it of the shop.

Do we really want UO to be like all the other cookie cutter games out there, surely not.

ALL THE POWER TO CONTROL GOLD SELLERS IS IN THE HANDS OF THE PLAYERS. READ THE GREEN ABOVE.

Shoot... I always thought the site is authorized by EA. The reason is that I sent a help ticket to EA before, seeking help to buy the SA account upgrade code as it was not available in my country. They told me to go to the site you mentioned and here is the proof:

Keep in mind the link is NOT referring to uogamecodes.com if someone wonders

Stratics Veteran

Shoot... I always thought the site is authorized by EA. The reason is that I sent a help ticket to EA before, seeking help to buy the SA account upgrade code as it was not available in my country. They told me to go to the site you mentioned and here is the proof:

Keep in mind the link is NOT referring to uogamecodes.com if someone wonders

Stratics Veteran

nah, if it's like the "support" i've gotten they just provided him with the first link google returned based on what you asked them.....I have an entire folder in my email account filled with useless replies like this...though most of mine either start with

Thank you for your petition. We are contacting you in regards to your GM petition number xxxxxxx. This appeal was closed without contacting you directly, because it was determined to be a type of question or issue that is not handled by in-game GMs.

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or

Greetings and thank you for your petition,

Unfortunately you appear to be offline at this time.

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with the latter generally sent to me around 3-4am 10-12 hours after I paged...yeah...no **** i'm offline at that time

''THAT''Kinda makes you think EA as ties with the gold scripting sites and ''THAT'' is why we should according to the devs...''TOLERATE'' scripters,afk'ers and cheaters in the game.....

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You're assuming that the gold sellers make enough that EA would take notice. If they were making enough where EA would take notice, EA would just roll out more pixel crack in the Origin store and/or officially offer gold for sale and threaten to ban anybody who is buying from the illegal sites. Maybe when there was 200,000 players and gold was worth many times what it was.

There is a bigger problem with your thinking though that somebody else brought up last year: If EA was involved in anyway with people who are performing illegal actions in MMORPGs to financially benefit, EA would be in a world of **** if it got out. The story would not be about UO scripters, it would read something like "EA condoning the action of people exploiting MMORPGs, is EA allowing exploiters to financially benefit from Star Wars: The Old Republic?" The gaming media would go into a feeding frenzy. They love a good scandal, they love to rake EA over the coals about Star Wars' subscription numbers and problems. They would bring the two issues together. EA is not going to allow anything that could harm Star Wars. Nobody at EA is going to risk their jobs over gold reseller operations that make very little compared to the scheme of things.

If EA wanted more money out of UO, they have artists, and they have the Origin store.

Jeff [23:38]: We are taking a more active approach to the hacking stuff that’s going on. Some of our players may have noticed GMs pulling them aside. I don’t want to get too much into the details of it. We don’t condone hackers. We feel that they devalue the game experience. And those players who are not, are on unfair grounds because they’re not hacking the system like the [hackers] are. So it unbalances things greatly. The bottom line is, we know when people are hacking, and we’re going to be taking a more aggressive approach against [them]: warning them and then, if need be, getting them out of the game and off those shards.

Now, speaking of hackers, though, there’s definitely…there’s some stuff that the team and I are in discussion about. We understand that some players just want to play that way, and [we're] trying to figure out a way where we can give them a place to play like that. So, we’ll see. Maybe we’ll talk more about that towards the summer.

Stratics Veteran

We already have our fair share of spam and this issue is related to only a single website while other websites only drop books on the floor around banks. Note that they can take this website's route but I guess they don't want to annoy other players which I really appreciate.

I also think Ultima Online has higher standards than other newer MMOs so I am expecting our development team to solve this issue.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

I read somewhere an interview to a owner of one of those sites. Basically they uses just scripts to gather everything with a value with something like 100 accounts all payed with stolen credit cards.
For spam obviously they uses unlimited trial accounts.
In short this people earn more than EA in a month and if they get banned they lose nothing...

The devs can prevents spam by blocking the use of the chat with trial accounts, but then the trial will be pointless and they will start to drop books, runes, etc...
By the way many other games with many more devs have failed to solve the problem, whathever they do those sellers will just pop out again

Stratics Veteran

I don't accept "others have failed" argument, especially since that website's name is not even blocked from chat. So currently, there is no attempt to solve this issue and what you are suggesting is to ignore it since "others have failed". Ignoring this will only encourage those websites and accepting the defeat without even trying is just plain wrong. This is also the case for scripters. You should at least try (give the GMs the option to mute a player without telling them when they continuously advertise rmt websites, etc.) and add preventive measures before declaring that you have failed.

I think the trial accounts are just being used to spam the website. I see those messages quite a bit lately in chat.

If you go to the website and buy the gold, you're probably dealing with a different account that has access to their storehouses. Those places are offering hundreds of millions on most of the shards, so they gotta store it somewhere. Not to mention the accounts used for scripting whatever it is they are scripting to generate all of that free gold. Those accounts and storehouses would still be easy to find since they have to make contact with their customers somehow.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

The thing is, I dont think the gold is visable to any GM scrutiny. It's hidden like all of us keep large sums. On Vendors. Where else can you put a few billion gold?
But here is the rub and there is little we or the Dev can do... How do you tell if its legit gold made or illgotten? I dont envy any Dev trying to decern who is and who isnt. When a castle on Atlantic just sold for 1.6 billion gold it makes one wonder have we got any chance to catch the scripters that sell? I cant even say I have never had so much gold - cause in this day and age in UO I have had in my posession pretty close to a billion gold from sales at one of the Rares Fest..... We have a serious problem, one I for one cant figure out who the Dev will haul off ....... Players use trial accounts for a multitude of things, but what if the dev stoped them? How would we get new players to try UO? Dont say F2P ether that wouldnt work with our game..... We have a catch 22 damned if they do, damned if they dont..... I for one Do Not Envy the Dev if they pick up this gauntlet.....

Stratics Veteran

it's simple, log when items trade ownership (backpacks, secure chests), done in a smart way the transaction database wouldn't be very large even for millions of items, add a check to the client to scan for common cheats (most of them are pretty blatent, even creating their own registry entries that's basicly a giant "I have this installed"), and flag players to be "watched" that regularly recieve gold or items from flagged accounts, a month or two down the road...BAM, ban all the accounts that have run cheats.

Granted that would remove 90% of UO's current population, so they probably don't want to do that....but I can dream...

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

I don't accept "others have failed" argument, especially since that website's name is not even blocked from chat. So currently, there is no attempt to solve this issue and what you are suggesting is to ignore it since "others have failed". Ignoring this will only encourage those websites and accepting the defeat without even trying is just plain wrong. This is also the case for scripters. You should at least try (give the GMs the option to mute a player without telling them when they continuously advertise rmt websites, etc.) and add preventive measures before declaring that you have failed.

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the point is: we have 10-15 devs?
if they all start to work on the spam/shops problem then UO will have nothing else for months and this could also be wasted since this shops will always return no matter what you are going to do...
The only doable thing is (except shooting in the head to the shop owners) collect the shop names and website and put a filter that block every message that contains that sites. Since this people MUST write the website in order to get people there and there are not many illegal shops for UO it could work.
Obviously this system must search for every possible typing of those sites like: w.w.w.s.h.o.p.w.i.t.h.m.e.c.o.m

Stratics Veteran

Go to those web sites and go to UOs Store and look at the prices they are both charging. Either EA is giving them a discount or they have millions of these items duped. Either way EA will do nothing to them because of the number of accounts they are paying for and if you dont think EA knows who they are and where all the items are then I am sorry. Here is another possible reason that EA will do nothing about this is, just maybe, because EA is running them.

Go to those web sites and go to UOs Store and look at the prices they are both charging. Either EA is giving them a discount or they have millions of these items duped. Either way EA will do nothing to them because of the number of accounts they are paying for and if you dont think EA knows who they are and where all the items are then I am sorry. Here is another possible reason that EA will do nothing about this is, just maybe, because EA is running them.

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I'll repeat what I said earlier in the thread: If EA got caught being involved with any of that, there would be a huge ****storm with the gaming media. You just think the Mass Effect 3 ending was a PR nightmare for EA. If EA was caught selling items for UO through sleazy sites, then the gaming media would not be talking about UO, they would be questioning whether or not EA was doing RMT sales through sleazy sites for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It would taint Star Wars, and EA is not going to do anything to taint Star Wars. It's their favorite child. Plus EA is a publicly traded company, and there would be hell to pay if they were covering up sales. UO means very little when compared to Star Wars, and they just aren't going to risk anything that can taint Star Wars. Look at how hard they worked to put out the ME3 fires.

Rather than getting caught doing something that could taint their precious Star Wars, it would be far easier and cheaper, and would make them more money to just up front start offering more stuff through Origin.com, up to and including gold. It would make them a lot more money, because people who would not use one of those third party sites would see Origin.com as legit and would not have a problem using it. They already outsource a lot of their graphics work, it wouldn't be a stretch for them to hire a half a dozen people in China to start cranking out paid pixel crack. Hell, the UO producer has extensive experience handling outsourcing in China for graphics stuff.

If EA wants to sell stuff for real-life money, they will do so through Origin.com.

I really don't think there are as many people involved with RMT, the serious stuff, as some people think, because the player population isn't high enough to support all that many.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Go to those web sites and go to UOs Store and look at the prices they are both charging. Either EA is giving them a discount or they have millions of these items duped. Either way EA will do nothing to them because of the number of accounts they are paying for and if you dont think EA knows who they are and where all the items are then I am sorry. Here is another possible reason that EA will do nothing about this is, just maybe, because EA is running them.

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those accounts are mainly paid with stolen credit cards so EA do not get money from that and probably those people is earning more than EA from UO

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